Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/434



reader may imagine the lazaretto, peopled with sixteen thousand persons infected with the plague: the vast enclosure was encumbered with cabins, tents, cars, and human beings. Two long ranges of porticoes, to the right and left, were crowded with the dying or the dead, extended upon straw; and from the immense receptacle of woe, was heard a deep murmur, similar to the distant voice of the waves, agitated by a tempest.

Renzo went forward from hut to hut, carefully examining every countenance he could discern within—whether broken down by suffering, distorted by spasm, or fixed in death. Hitherto he met none but men, and judged, therefore, that the women were distributed in some other part of the inclosure. The state of the atmosphere seemed to add to the horror of the scene: a dense and dark fog involved all things. The disc of the sun, as if seen through a veil, shed a feeble light in its own part of the sky, but darted down a heavy deathlike blast of heat: a confused murmuring of distant thunder might be heard. Not a leaf moved, not a bird was seen—save the swallow only, which descended to the plain, and, alarmed at the dismal sounds around, remounted the air, and disappeared. Nature seemed at war with human existence—hundreds seemed to grow worse—the last struggle more afflictive—and no hour of bitterness was comparable to that.

Renzo had, in his search, witnessed, as he thought, every variety of human suffering. But a new sound caught his ear—a compound of children's crying and goats' bleating: looking through an opening of the boards of a hut, he saw children, infants, lying upon sheets or quilts upon the floor, and nurses attending them; but the most singular part of the spectacle, was a number of she-goats supplying the maternal functions, and with all the appearance of conscious sympathy hastening, at the cries of the helpless little ones, to afford them the requisite nutrition. The